The Travancore Cochin Council of Modern Medicine (TCMC) has refused to give registration to a bunch of medical undergraduate students holding certificates from universities abroad, despite them having cleared the Foreign Medical Graduates’ Examination (FMGE), after the students’ passports revealed that they have not actually spent the course period abroad.
In the normal course, a foreign medical graduate who has cleared the screening test (FMGE, conducted by the National Board of Examinations), is eligible to seek registration from the State Medical Council.
However, the TCMC took the conscious decision not to give registration to some of these students as it doubted the veracity of the certificates they produced.
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“We have no idea whether this is another racket. Every year, the number of foreign medical graduates from Kerala has been going up and because we have no means of ensuring the genuineness of these certificates, we began checking their passports. The visa stamping clearly showed that many of the students have not spent more than two weeks in the country where they chose to study,” says V.G. Pradeepkumar, TCMC vice president.
“We cannot allow those who attained medical education through off-campus means or distance education to practise in Kerala. Their documentation might be all fine, but ‘long distance medical education’ is not something we can overlook. The students might challenge our decision in court but as the State Medical Council, it is our responsibility to ensure that only well-qualified and trained doctors enter the profession,” TCMC Registrar, A. Muhammed Hussain, told The Hindu
The students are free to seek the registration to practise in some other State.
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In January last year, the TCMC took the decision that no foreign medical graduate will be allowed to practise in Kerala unless they underwent an year’s internship in a government hospital here.
Though many students even produced certificates stating that they had completed internship abroad, the TCMC stood firm that the students will not be allowed to practise till they were familiar with Kerala’s health system.
Though 14 students challenged this, Kerala High Court recently upheld the TCMC’s decision.